Of the many memorializations of the civil rights movement, among the most familiar to Jews is a photograph of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching in 1965 in Selma, Ala. In addition to its own innate power, it is referenced as evidence of our community’s support for black rights and the strength of African-American/Jewish relationships.

This post originally appeared on City Suburban News on December 2, 2014

By City Suburban News

At “Cocktails with a Conscience” participants will test their knowledge of the City of Brotherly Love in a game called “QUIZZO!” Participants will compete in three quiz rounds, while discussing such important issues facing the city as class and race divisions and how food is produced and distributed.

The only absolute binaries that I know — things that can truly be only one or the other — are the following: unique and non-unique, pregnant and phew. Those can only be those. Every other concept, group, pattern, threshold or delineation I have ever encountered allows for some variation, however small, between or around the two alternatives.

Not long ago, speaking about a resurgent Jewish community in Detroit would have had folks thinking you were a few candles short of a full menorah. Since the late 2000s, though, there’s been a major revival of Jewish life in the city, spurred on by an enthusiastic influx of young Jews under the age of 40.

In the Grand Army Plaza, at the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the circle dance threatened to close me in. I had avoided it for some time, but the energy was contagious. I gave in and danced in one of the joyful concentric circles. This was the third year of “Simchat Torah Across Brooklyn,” an outdoor celebration spearheaded by Rabbi Andy Bachman and Cantor Joshua Breitzer of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

This post originally appeared on JEwish Exponent on September 17, 2014

By jelkin

Michelle Marks, 67, stood out in a West Philadelphia meeting space filled with mostly 20-somethings painting cardboard signs with phrases like “Philly Loves Climate Justice.” The group of local Jewish activists were preparing for the Sept. 21 People’s Climate March in Manhattan.

Boxing great Thomas “Hitman” Hearns has joined an effort to fight blight in the Detroit neighborhood where he grew up. A number of others have helped put together the cleanup along with Repair the World Detroit, a Jewish volunteer organization.

Even if you weren’t present for the Grand Opening of The Workshop — perhaps you were walking/running for Israel, Lagging b’Omer or pollinating at Flower Day — you were there in spirit. So thank you for being there in spirit (and for leaving the Honeybee Market guacamole for the rest of us).